Wild Frontier

The past few days have been exciting, challenging and crazy!

A New Home

First off, we've made an offer on a home, and it was accepted!  It's much smaller than our previous home (1800 sq feet vs 2900) but we wanted to downsize anyway.  It's located only 10 minutes from the store, and was built in 1999 - so hopefully there are no major issues.  We've done most of the inspections and we'll submit our inspection objections tomorrow.  The only real downsides are the steep driveway and no dining room to speak of.  It even has a hot-tub, which was one of my personal requests of the Lord, so I can get some relief during the bad nights with restless legs.  We're taking a calculated risk to buy the home, since we would not qualify for a home loan until we can show 2 years of profit from the store (and the store has shown no profit so far, which is the norm for small start-up businesses) which requires us to use IRA funds along with the equity from our home in Conifer.   Our home for the past six months has been the apartment above the store (and three storage units) which has worked out fine for the short term, but we've all been sleeping in one room which has it's definite drawbacks... I'll leave that one to your imagination.   The house was only on the market one day and already had one offer on it, so we had to jump on it to have any chance of getting it.   We'd already had three other homes that we were ready to make offers on (all of them on the market 3 days or less), and each time they were already under contract.  No question the housing market is heating up.  Our trust is in the Lord and His faithfulness.  God is good, all the time!

MYERS MARAUDERS

I've started an old west gunfighter reenactment group called The Myers' Marauders.  The whole idea came about last year when I invited another reenactment group to come perform on Bailey Day.  I wanted them back this year (June 14), but they were not available.  I started doing some research, recruited a few other guys who enjoy playing cowboy, and we're now in the process of joining the American Frontier Reenactment Guild.  The guild is very particular about the actors wearing authentic period clothing and using period guns - so I traded in my .357 for a replica colt .45 revolver.  We're scheduled to do five shows on Bailey Day, and we're working out an agreement with South Park City (very popular 1800's ghost town in Fairplay, CO) to perform multiple times this summer.  We had our first performance in Shawnee (couple miles from Bailey) for their history day. The gal who was organizing the event wanted it to be a surprise, but I know how many people are packing heat up here and told her that we needed to put a sign up to alert people that a western gunfight would be taking place.  Part of the skit involved me coming in with a scarf over my face and my gun drawn.  I yelled, "This is a hold-up!  Get your hands in the air!"  At which time the musician who'd been playing up front points a gun at me and yells, "Oh yeah!  We'll see about that!".  My immediate thought was, "This wasn't part of our script", and I stood there for a couple of seconds wondering what to do - since I only had blanks, and depending on whether that's a toy or not that he's pointing at me this could get tricky.  I decided to ignore him and went on with the show.  Found out later it was a toy gun... that's all I need is a hero who guns me down in the middle of a show!  The following weekend we were asked to do two performances for the first anniversary of the new Staunton State Park near Conifer.   I have a feeling this hobby could get out of control real fast!

What does believing in God have to do with Sasquatch?

A recent article I wrote for a local newspaper.  Enjoy :)



A few weeks ago I went squatching with a couple of friends. “Squatching” is an Indian word that means “White people walking in the woods who see nothing.” However, seeing nothing never stops me. Kind of like killing nothing has never stopped me from hunting. My so-called friends say the safest place for an elk to be is right in front of my rifle. Very funny. The safest place is actually a little to the left in front of me. Anyway, we started our hike where we'd seen some promising signs in previous weeks, and it wasn't long before we found a bunch of sapling tree breaks. No one knows why Squatches (that's what we Squatchers call them) break trees, but it's assumed to be some kind of territorial display. It's the Sasquatch version of big tires and lift-kits on pickup trucks, only much less expensive. The (top secret) place where we were hiking was literally covered with deer and elk tracks, which is a good sign since Squatches really like their protein. After a couple of hours of walking we came across something really strange: there in the snow was a perfect, elk-shaped impression – but no elk. It was like someone had pressed in the snow with a gigantic elk stamp. And we noticed something even weirder (is that a word?): there were no elk tracks leaving the site, nor lion tracks, nor drag marks, nor any blood. There weren't even any signs of a struggle. That elk just hit the snow like it ran into an invisible wall at full speed. We stood there like three Sherlock Holmes actors trying to figure this one out, and we could only come to one conclusion: the elk was picked up and carried away. And at 400-500 pounds that's no small feat of brute strength. There was another set of prints that paralleled the elk trail – only these were much larger and more shallow than the elk tracks with about a ten foot stride. But, of course, they were too melted by the sun to give any clear idea if they were Squatch prints. Yes, this is the footprint version of the fuzzy squatch-blob photos.


I've never personally seen a Sasquatch. I know quite a number of people who say they have, and in most cases I believe them. The first eye-witness I ever met was my friend Kate, who saw a large Squatch in May of 2012 along with a friend with whom she was hiking. Since then, we've met scores of people who come into our store in Bailey to stick a colored pin on the Colorado Sasquatch Sightings Map we have up on the wall. There's over 70 pins on that map already, and we only put it up six months ago. Course, that's about the time the grow store opened up down the street... just kidding. All joking aside, the legend of Bigfoot has to go down as one of the great mysteries of the last two centuries: how a creature that stands eight feet tall, weighs somewhere around 800 pounds, walks on two legs, is covered with hair, stinks like a skunk, and has never, not even once, been caught or confirmed killed. And yet there are hundreds, possibly even thousands of stories that come from every state in the union. EVERY state. Even Arizona and New Mexico. They can't possibly all be hoaxes or drunken hallucinations. There is definitely SOMETHING out there.


We get a lot of Sasquatch enthusiasts coming to our store, and they will eventually get up the courage to ask THE question: “Do YOU believe in Bigfoot? Hmm...Do I Believe? The question almost feels religious, as if they were asking if I'm a Bigfootist, or if I practice Sasquatchism. I've even had someone ask me how I, as a religious person, can believe in Bigfoot. Why? What does believing in God have to do with Sasquatch? Apparently, many people look at God and Sasquatch in the same way – as mythical creatures with no scientific foundation for their existence. To a certain point I agree with them, because to believe that God or Sasquatch exists takes a healthy dose of faith. But of this I am sure: there's only one thing that will turn a skeptic into a believer – and that's a personal encounter. Then there's no convincing them that God or Sasquatch DOESN'T exist! I can attest to the fact that God is real, He is personal, and He is seeking a relationship with each of us. He has broken through into my world numerous times in dramatic, unmistakable ways. I love to tell these “ God moment” stories, because my life will never be the same. So who knows? One of these days when I'm out in the woods I just might have a personal encounter with Sasquatch, and after I've cleaned my trousers I'll tell you about it.